A plaque on a wall in his Truro house is testament to Sidney McCabe’s 35 years and five months of service to CN Rail. His devotion to his wife Carol has lasted longer — 51 years and counting — even if she’s no longer aware of it.

For a decade after she was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, McCabe looked after his sweetheart in the home where they raised their two sons, cooking the meals, cleaning the house and making sure there was a cinnamon roll on the table for her breakfast each morning.

Carol was just 58 when the symptoms started.

“She used to go down to the mall, and she’d forget where the car was when she came out. I said, ‘Put some yarn on the antenna and you’ll be able to find it,’” said McCabe, who was soon forced to seek an appointment with a gerontologist.

“Dr. (Gary) Altenkirk was there, he’s an Alzheimer’s doctor. We went into his office and he said, ‘I’ll give you a test: penny, ball and table. Remember those three words, because I’m going to ask them to you in five minutes.’ She only got one right. He turned around to me and said he thought she had the beginnings of Alzheimer’s.”

Carol started feeling pins and needles in her head, and the couple’s family doctor predicted she’d be dead in four years. That was 12 years ago.

“We kept going in to visit him and one day he said, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing, young fella, but you’re sure doing something right.’

“I cooked meals, good meals, and I used to take her with me everywhere I went. I wasn’t like some of them, shut them in a room and forget about them.”

McCabe’s grandson Evan arrived for a visit. McCabe had a sideline as a woodworker throughout his railroad career, and he and Evan were going to put the finishing touches on a pine trunk for the 13-year-old to store his important things.

We used to take trips. … That’s the worst I find now, I got nobody to go with.

Photos of all five of McCabe’s grandchildren are prominent in the house, but Evan and his sister are too young to have known Carol before she got sick.

McCabe had been retired about nine years when Carol started to fail. She had spent years working in a local drugstore, and then in a laundromat near their house.

“At the end, I had to take her out of that, because she was making mistakes.

“We used to take trips. On Sundays, used to go over to Pictou, go up Route 6 to Amherst and back down, go over to Antigonish and over to the shore, through Sheet Harbour and all them places. I used to enjoy that. That’s the worst I find now, I got nobody to go with.”

While his wife’s cognitive abilities spiralled downward, McCabe kept her at home, taught himself how to use the washing machine and added caregiver to his duties.

“One week, she’d know how to comb her hair. Next week, gone. She’d know how to brush her teeth, then gone. It got to the point where she didn’t know how to do anything.

“You just had to be with her all the time. You had to make the meals, get groceries, do everything. I looked after her 10 years myself, 24-7, and I had the VON for a year and a half. They’re nothing to brag about, I tell you.”

Carol McCabe moved into a Debert nursing home last year.

Finally, last year, three months before the couple’s 50th anniversary, Carol moved into a nursing home in Debert, about 20 minutes away. Because McCabe had kept her at home while her health deteriorated, he was able to select a particular facility for her.

“If you put somebody in the hospital that’s got Alzheimer’s because you can’t look after them, when a place comes open — it could be 200 miles away — you’ve got to go there. Then they’ll keep shifting them around till they’re back home.

“We waited 20 months to get her into the home in Debert. It’s run between Shannex and the government.

“When I first started paying, it was $1,792 a month. Then Darrell Dexter put $3 million back into long-term care for seniors and it reduced my monthly payment so I pay $1,464 a month now. Carol’s Canada Pension and her Old Age Pension, plus we get what they call Involuntary Separation Allowance, and she gets $650 a month out of that.

“I have to pay the difference between whatever that comes to and the $1,464. Some months I don’t have to pay anything and some months I have to pay a hundred or so dollars. It’s good that I’ve got the pensions I’ve got, my Old Age Pension and my CN pension.”

When he retired 21 years ago, McCabe continued to subscribe to his company Blue Cross plan to cover prescriptions, for which he pays $5,005 annually.

“The nurse that came around to evaluate her said it was a good thing I kept the Blue Cross because it covers a lot of things that MSI doesn’t. You get a $38 bottle of pills and it costs you eight dollars, that’s pretty damn good.”

Sidney McCabe signs into a Debert nursing home to visit his wife Carol.

The nursing home Carol lives in is four years old and houses 12 residents in each of three wings. There’s a piano and an organ in the lobby, which doubles as a chapel. Ever the craftsman, McCabe, who visits once or twice a week, points out the wide, sunny hallways and all the maple wood used in construction.

“They wash the floor every day,” he says, greeting employees as he finds his wife in one of the home’s common areas, obviously proud of the care he’s arranged for Carol. “They’re looked after, right to the hilt.”

He’s arrived just after lunch, on this day a choice of butter chicken or pork loin with rice, broccoli and cauliflower, and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Carol doesn’t recognize her husband and mostly sleeps during his visit. He wakes her up for an appointment, a twice-yearly assessment by the facility’s gerontologist.

McCabe and two nurses get Carol in a wheelchair for the short trip down the hall.

“This is one of the hardest parts, having to wheel her down,” he says. “She should be able to walk, she’s only 71 years old, but that’s the way it is.”

Carol McCabe's room at a Debert nursing home is decorated with beloved family photos, including one of her and husband Sidney in their square-dancing outfits.

Each resident’s room has a private bathroom with walk-in shower. Carol’s room is decorated with pictures of grandchildren, and one of her and Sid in their square-dancing outfits. A selection of hymns plays on a small unit by her bed. Some of the residents have a television in their room, but she can no longer recognize TV.

In February, she fell while getting out of bed and broke a hip.

“They had her over to New Glasgow and got three screws in her hip,” said McCabe. “She didn’t remember any of it.”

Even though she has to take her meals in liquid form, Carol gained 10 pounds after she moved into the facility.

“Oh yeah, she’s as healthy as a horse and strong as a bull moose,” said McCabe.

“There was only a couple of times I went that she wanted to come home. The Sunday night before we went, I said, ‘Now Carol, I’m going to take you out to Debert on Tuesday afternoon and we’re putting you in there, that’s where you’re going to be staying.’ She said she didn’t know anybody and I told her she soon would.”

On the day he left her there, staffers told him he should give his wife a couple of weeks to get used to the place before he came back for a visit. He went home and made supper for himself, the loneliest meal he ever ate.

“It was the hardest thing I ever done, put her in the home. But I had to do it. Her mind’s gone, and when your mind’s gone, it’s gone. The other Sunday, I was out and said to her, ‘Do you know who this is?’ No answer. I said, ‘The old fart’s here,’ and she kind of smiled a little bit. The way Carol is, if she went tomorrow it wouldn’t bother me too much. It would hurt, but it’d be for the best.”

Sidney McCabe is alone now in the Truro house he shared with his wife Carol. He says he misses the drives he and his wife used to take together.